Left-Leaning Economists Question Cost of Bernie Sanders’s Plans – The New York Times

“The single-payer idea has enormous appeal: coverage for everyone, some effort to use the government’s bargaining power to hold down overall costs, clean out the godawful administrative mess that the U.S. health care system is and save money there,” said Henry J. Aaron, a longtime health economist at the Brookings Institution in Washington.

But he called it a “fairy tale” in this political climate. Along with other economists in a “lefty chat group” he joins online, Mr. Aaron said, he believes that if Mr. Sanders were elected and fought for a single-payer plan, it “would rapidly destroy his administration by using up every ounce of political capital he’s got.”